Abstract
Our experience in Poland is that foreign students of English are influenced by two factors detrimental to their ability to write good academic English. One is rhetorical strategies of their native language; the other is training in academic writing that misrepresents or leads students to misapprehend the contours of academic expression in written English.
In this paper, we mean to address this problem by taking an example of the use of selected pronouns, verbs, and adverbs employed to express assertion of fact, opinion, and assumption in academic writing in the humanities. The verbs to seem, to appear, and to prove are particularly prone to misuse or infelicitous use by Poles writing in English due to influence both from Polish rhetorical habits (in themselves a reflection of culture) and from English language training, which frequently misrepresents the role of the authorial voice in academic writing in English. The function of personal pronouns will also be discussed.
We are not aware of any current research on this area of this topic; therefore, we offer this paper as an invitation for further consideration of the importance of voice and modulation in foreign-authored academic papers. We believe that our remarks can have a wide application, mutatis mutandis, for similar problems in other European language communities.
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Notes
- 1.
Commonly, scholars describe argumentation as the defining feature of one main type of academic writing, namely, the essay, and, more narrowly still, the so-called argument essay (Coffin et al. 2003, p. 22). Neil Murray and Geraldine Hughes (2008, p. 3) name “argumentation” among a number of other “objectives” or “functions”: “definition,” “description,” “classification,” “cause-effect,” “comparison and contrast.”
- 2.
For the idea of the “debatable” or “thesis” statement see the relevant section at http://wwnorton.com/college/english/litweb10/writing/ “Writing about Literature” (accessed March 31, 2014).
- 3.
Rowena Murray and Sarah Moore dwell on the paradoxes of academic writing as a process rather than a final product: “Writing requires listening to and being guided by the voices of others, but also it demands your confidence and your willingness to present your own voice, your own perspectives and your own interpretations. … Writing is not just influenced by what we know and what we have discovered about a particular phenomenon, it is also influenced by what we feel, and more particularly, what we feel about ourselves …” (2006, p. 7).
- 4.
An example from Marggraf Turley’s book: “Marriage in Austen’s society was perceived as a functional device far removed from an emotional rhetoric.” He goes on to improve on this thesis statement because he finds it problematic for a number of reasons. But our point is this: As it is, it illustrates well what is meant by debatability.
- 5.
It is fair to state that for some scholars there is no room for personal pronouns in academic writing due to their informality. In Academic Writing Course (Jordan 2003), in a section on style, we read: “Personal pronouns I, you, we tend not to be used in more formal writing (except in letters, etc.). Instead the style may be more impersonal. An introductory it or there may begin sentences or even the impersonal pronoun one; passive verb tenses may also be used” (p. 92; see also Hartley 2008, p. 3).
- 6.
We exclude from this discussion the obvious and unavoidable use of we to denote authorial intent when a paper has more than one author, which is also, of course, the present case.
- 7.
Worth noting is Toby Fulwiler’s (2002) level-headed explanation (and the advice attached to it) placed under the heading “subjectivity”: “In many disciplines, your personal opinion may not be worth very much; in others it will be. In the more interpretive disciplines, such as history, philosophy, and literature, you will generally find more room for personal interpretation than in the more quantitative disciplines, such as chemistry, physics, and mathematics. (The social sciences fall somewhere in between.) To be safe, whenever you make an academic assertion in any discipline, use the best evidence you can find and document it. But in all disciplines, your own reasoned, and necessarily subjective judgment will at some times be necessary; if it is, just be sure to state it as such (‘In my opinion…’ or ‘It seems to me…’) and give the best reasons you can” (p. 59; emphasis in the original).
- 8.
Examples quoted here and subsequently are all taken from papers written by BA and MA students of the authors and their colleagues at the University of Silesia; irrelevant details of the quoted excerpts have been changed.
- 9.
It might be noted in passing that the verb wydawać się is treacherous also because Poles tend to use the “to be” infinitive (Pl. być) after it (as if mimicking the English “to seem to be”), e.g., “Wydawał się być zmęczony.” (“He seemed to be tired.”), which is incorrect. See the entry for wydać in Słownik poprawnej polszczyzny [Dictionary of Correct Polish Usage] (1995) Warszawa: PWN.
- 10.
Here we address only the meaning of the verb “to prove” that denotes establishment beyond question of matters of fact.
References
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Mydla, J., Schauffler, D. (2018). Assertion and Assertiveness in the Academic Writing of Polish EFL Speakers. In: Chitez, M., Doroholschi, C., Kruse, O., Salski, Ł., Tucan, D. (eds) University Writing in Central and Eastern Europe: Tradition, Transition, and Innovation. Multilingual Education, vol 29. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-95198-0_13
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